


Bow Like the Field

by serranodebergerac



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Prequel, not so much "canon-divergent" as i don't regard the arcana as canon anymore, this beast got away from me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:13:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23805142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serranodebergerac/pseuds/serranodebergerac
Summary: Among the slain strides the Light;and at his side,always, is his Shadow.
Relationships: Apprentice/Julian Devorak, Apprentice/Julian Devorak/Lucio (The Arcana), Apprentice/Lucio (The Arcana), Julian Devorak/Lucio (The Arcana), Julian Devorak/Original Character(s), Julian Devorak/Original Female Character(s), Lucio (The Arcana)/Original Character(s), Lucio (The Arcana)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	1. Prologue

_ All stories have their monsters. _

~

#  Prologue

  
  


They say that in the South, the wind snaps with jaws of frost.

In such a season, the ice spreads black and hard on lakes and streams. Even the fiercest warriors can fall quickly beneath winter’s sword, and their shrouds are thick with down and diamond. All grows still and silent and forgotten beneath the vast sleep of the snow. Night grows thick, chewing at the trees and leaving their bones pushing through the bloody light.

The sun was dragging its wounded belly along the horizon, staining the snow with the long dusk, pooling light in otherwise dark corners of the woods and plucking secrets out of the shadows of the birch trees.

Perhaps, in another season, she would never have seen him at all.

Huddled in her blue cloak, she tucked the fur collar around her face with one hand, her hair a wild bramble the color of a blackbird. She placed careful steps within the old footprints in the snow, guiding her way back home from the snares she set, all empty save for a pair of scrawny rabbits that now hung from her belt.

Perhaps, in another season, her life would have stayed just so; simple and determined as the arctic day passing into blue dusk.

Her eyes caught the warm crackle of color against the snow. Light grasped desperate as a dying thing at the red cloth of a tunic, the gold strands of hair. It took her a moment to realize what it was.

Her first thought was that he must be dead. As she turned from her path, placing a tentative boot into the crust of undisturbed snow, she saw the body more clearly. Abandoned, curled around itself beneath a snow-covered brier, insensate and blue with cold, his skin scraped by the thorns. She knelt to try and shift his limbs, peeling away the barbed black canes. He groaned suddenly, startling her. She rolled back into a defensive crouch, pulling a little antler-handled knife with brilliant speed. But he didn’t move or make further sound. Slowly, she lowered the knife and crept forward.

She turned him over and saw his face, saw smudged black thorns painted beneath his eyes, markings that confirmed he belonged to one of the warlike tribes at the far edges of her woods. She lifted her gaze to peer superficially through the trees, unconvinced that there would be others with him. The boy with the thorns under his eyes had clearly been left alone. Whatever tribe he was marked with, he was a part of no longer.

Darkness began to seep into the branches of the birch trees around them, and she heard a sound like the distant scream of horses. Cold wind brushed her cheek and she shivered with dread. She should leave him to the things that roamed the woods at nightfall and make for the safety of her hut. But something compelled her there. The sight of the boy, less than half alive, crumpled up and discarded like something unwanted in the snowy woods, stirred at a painful memory in her gut. In that moment, the thought of spending her night safe by the fire, knowing he would be here dying alone, became unbearable to her.

With her little knife she cut the canes wrapped around him, ignoring the scratches they left along her hands. Then she hoisted him bodily across her shoulders and made her way through the snow to her hut.

~

The first sensation he had was the burning thaw of his skin. Then noise; the squall of wind against sturdy walls. A diabolical sound, as though it sought to pry the little home apart with frost-blackened fingers. Images of his surroundings swam in and out of focus: he saw fire, his boots set to dry beside it. He saw the roof of a cabin, strung with bundles of herbs and a curing leg of venison. A pair of dead rabbits, eyeing him glassily. A shelf packed with jars and bottles. Then a woman’s face, indistinct through the shadow of her hair. The only clear attribute he could discern was a dark blue mask staining the top half of her face. In the hell of his fever it frightened him in his bones, like a figure from nightmares or a tale told to frighten children of the dark.

Then he saw nothing.

He felt coarse hands peeling off his frigid clothing, and he tried to resist, mewling and helpless as a newborn. Then a feverish, humid heat soaking slowly through him and filling his lungs like gulps of summertime. He curled in on himself, recognizing that he was naked, his skin prickling with sweat. Someone gently pried him apart, stretched him face down on a cloth on the floor of the burning room. He heard a woman’s voice, senseless but meaningful as a voice heard in dreams.

_ This will hurt, but it will help _ .

Then he felt a blessed hot pain scourging his back.

He began to understand what had happened to him. That he had crawled, desperate, beneath the snowbank. That he had been dead, or nearly so. That the birch broom against his back was meant to whip his blood back to life, to force warmth back into his frozen body. He groaned, eyes swimming and unfocused. He smelled wild oils of oak and roses and apples, felt hands rubbing it into his back, over his arms and legs, kneading his hands and the soles of his feet. He felt cool water at his lips and he coughed and sputtered and drank. Relief flooded over him. Then the burning kiss of the birch switch, again, and again, and again, and the shock of his own weakness made him cry hot and bitter tears.

All the while, carrying him through the dark, he heard the shriek of hungry winds, squeezing the little hut with snow and cold and the memory of the endless forest beyond, reaching out to him.


	2. Part 1: I

#  Part 1

##  I

Soft deer fur, tinged reddish by the flicker of the fire. The rough wool of a woven blanket. A red clay pitcher and cup laying beside him on the floor. Slowly the world stitched itself back together, his whole body stinging but very much alive. And warm. On his own skin he still smelled wild forest scents -- apples, and oak, and rose. He wore his own clothes, tanned leather trousers, a white shirt and red jerkin, his bronze armor pauldron removed along with the sword-belt and buckled collar. He blinked in confusion -- had he dreamed, in his fever, of the woman and the heat and the lash?

The momentary bubble of calm burst at the sound of frenzied banging against the door and shutters. He started, hand going instinctively to his hip for the sword that had long ago been removed, as the beating sound continued against the little house. The shutters chattered like teeth. The door shuddered on its hinges, and the fire billowed in the grate beside him as though holding back intruders. The hairs on his neck prickled as he heard it -- screaming, a choir of shouts that, in another instant, sounded like no more than furious winds. He was no longer sure what he was hearing, but whatever it was, it didn’t cease. He turned his head quietly, unsure of who else was in the room. He saw a shape in the dark, resolved it into a human figure with her back to him, that familiar, dark hair cascading like a brier. And then he remembered the painted face and felt a primal fear at the memory.

The folk of his tribe had told tales of witches and monsters who lure men to the woods for their own nefarious deeds. The hut with its prosaic belongings seemed suddenly threatening and insidious. In that moment he managed to convince himself that between the mysterious woman and what must be merely the wind, he knew which he preferred to face.

Soft as a cat, he propped himself on his hands, ignoring the pain in them. He watched as the figure skinned a rabbit, working in quick strokes. He calculated that whatever plan he made, he would have to make swiftly. She was small, and though it was hard to make out her body beneath her blue shawl, he figured she would be easy to take in a fight, at least to make a quick getaway. His eyes scanned for his sword, saw it lying far away, leaning by the door. He crept back another inch, and his hand brushed something heavy and iron laying beside the hearth.

He gripped the fire poker and stood, taking two hunter’s steps toward her. The light from the fire caught in little bronze beads threaded through her curly hair, ruffled against a pair of striped feathers woven into its depths. He stood about a head taller than her. Good. He had the advantage. He raised his weapon over his shoulder and swung it straight at her head.

By coincidence, she turned. His eyes widened in alarm. There was hardly time for his heart to let out a single, stumbling beat as he saw her face, mirroring his shock.

With the reflexes of a tigress, she ducked beneath his blow, grabbing his falling arm and kicking the poker out of his hand.

They toppled, their combined movement bringing their faces together. She bared her teeth in anger. “What are you--?” she began, but he shouldered her away with a yowl, scrambling up, too dizzy to think properly of his boots, bolting straight for the door. She caught his ankle, striking like an asp, and he sprawled with a rough  _ crash _ against the floor.

“You… stupid…  _ fucker _ …” she bellowed over the sound of the storm outside, yanking him bodily away from his escape, dragging him across the floorboards.

His eyes grew in surprise at how much strength this tiny woman had. He wrenched his body around, kicking furiously, trying to dislodge himself like an errant burr. “Witch,” he shouted, his tone bordering on petulant. “Let me go!”

He hooked his free leg between hers, tried to trip her. She fell heavily on top of him, pinning him to the ground, straddling him as he thrashed beneath her like an eel, fists flying. He could see her silhouetted against the hearth, incandescent with fury, and with a wild swing, he managed to clip her on the mouth. Eyes blazing and lips bleeding, she thundered profanities at him, her fist meeting his nose with a sickening crack. He snarled, but didn’t stop his struggling. Her mettle made his blood beat faster. He smiled despite himself, looking thoroughly wretched through the bleeding mess of his face.

“You little wild thing,” he laughed, half anger and half delight, blood pouring down his chin.

She grabbed him by the hair and pulled. He yelped, one hand raking her collar with his nails, his other hand pressing desperately upwards on her face, attempting to muscle her off of him.

“If you -- open -- that door --” she tried to say around the bloody, slipping mess of his hand on her split mouth.

He heaved her over with a crash, the clay pitcher and cup spiraling off to the side, spilling their contents all over the furs. Without even a second down, she clawed her way back up, snatching her little bone-handled knife from its place at her hip, but he was already at the door, slamming the iron bar away and hauling the heavy wood open to face the dark. He heard her shout one hideous  _ No! _ From behind, and he barrelled out into the snow before stopping dead in his tracks, eyes transfixed by what lay beyond her door.

The winds were black and snarling like beasts, croaking like enormous carrion crows. Glinting in the woods, he could see hundreds of eyes turned suddenly toward him, teeth bared -- that in one moment seemed to just be the whirl of snowfall, and in another seemed impossibly dangerous, eldritch, and terrible. Dark night-horses jostled at each other, pawing at the tree branches, while wolves made of ice and darkness crouched low and grinning. Overhead wheeled flocks of what appeared to be birds, their heads white and sharp as bare bone. He froze in terror, the ice creeping up his spine only moderately due to the weather.

Some uncanny force pushed him to his hands and knees, and he felt cold snow crunching between his fingers. They were here for him, and he knew it. He had made the deal and it had led to exile, and the shadows he saw dancing and snapping the trees like bullwhips were here to collect.

“ _ Pretty thing _ ,” he heard gasping through the branches. Something dark with eyes like scorching coals pulled his face up appraisingly. “ _ Tasty, selfish thing-- _ ” it uttered, and a feeling like a thousand chips of ice speared through his flesh. With a snap of power, the being shrieked, sucked suddenly away back into the darkness, wailing in fear at some unknown threat.

He hadn’t even known that the witch had come to kneel beside him, her mouth glowing and dripping runes of power like embers. He didn’t know then who he feared more, the howling void of the woods or the witch who brought it to bear, but some illogical relief plummeted through him..

“Hold!” she shouted, her voice booming outward like an earthquake. Snow misted off of the roof of her hut, formed snarling faces that then blew away into nothingness. “You have no power beyond this threshold, this is my abode and I am his guardian.”

A rustle whipped through the blackness. He felt his hair floating around him, as though fingers like cold iron coaxed him forward.

“ _ We want him _ ,” a voice answered, indistinct and fierce as though winter itself had spoken. “ _ We are owed a life that he has failed to deliver _ …”

“Here you are owed nothing,” she said. “I have paid your price before and you know what it bought me. Dominion over you.” Her eyes flashed. Snow leapt into the air, white and furious as the bleached bones of rearing warhorses.

Whatever spoke in the wind seemed to consider, soften its demeanor to a mocking hiss. “ _ Dominion? You are a foolish girl who made a foolish deal, and for that, we all suffer. Why take him from us? No one in the world ever wanted him. And so he came to us. _ ”

“I want him,” she snarled. “I am as hungry as you, and he is mine.”

The winds grew wild and frenzied once more, and she knelt beside him in the snow.

“Idiot,” she chastened softly in his ear, taking his hand in hers. With her other hand, she flicked out the little knife. He suddenly regretted his relief, recoiling from her, unsure who it was he now faced.

“What do you want from me?” he warbled, quite unsure how to extract himself from between the clutches of these two opposing and seemingly equally formidable sides.

“Fool,” she repeated, pulling him close. “They know you are here now. This hut is enchanted with wards against them and for the most part I can control them. But their hunger for you is enough to risk angering me. I should have known when I saw the cuts on the soles of your feet, that they would not leave without payment.” She heaved him to his feet, braced them both in a fighter’s stance.

“Payment?” he asked, his voice unsteady. He knew what currency demons preferred.

“A token,” she explained, tugging his hand toward her and indicating the knife with a nod of her head. “To appease them, for the time being. Do as I do, and for your own bloody sake,  _ do not say a word _ \--”

He looked her in the eye. She seemed in earnest; and though every bone in his body entreated suspicion, he felt that in this moment she was the only person in the world he could possibly trust. His eyes, meeting hers without animosity for the first time, shocked her with their steely clarity. He nodded.

She dug the tip of her knife into the fleshy pad beneath his thumb, made a small X and pressed it to her lips. She sucked sharply, then held the blood in her mouth and swigged from a silver flask drawn from her hip. She handed the knife to him, held out her hand. He looked at her with a sick panic, taking her hand, scoring a sloppy X that mirrored his. He saw a smear of his own blood on her chin as he leaned down and sucked the warmth from her palm.

She took his hand, little bleeding Xs kissing, folding her other arm before her. Then she spat, a hissing, spraying noise as red libation peppered the snow. She looked at him. He realized he was shaking, not entirely from cold. He held his arm as she had done and spat her blood out to stain the white.

The winds swarmed, kicking up the red and white snow, scrabbling for a taste of their quarry. She began to speak something under her breath, some incantation, and her voice seemed to fray into multiple voices, some stretched, deeper, hellish and writhing with the strange words. Once more he saw little runelike shapes glowing on her tongue, floating from her mouth like sparks.

Unable to look away from her, he felt true, bone-chilling fear for perhaps the first time in his life. This was a power that appealed to no reason that he knew of. The woman beside him frightened and captivated him in ways he couldn’t understand, with her hand burning in his, her wild black hair preened by smiling winds and her blue painted mask spattered with his own blood, staining her chin like warpaint. He gulped, frozen in place.

“Inside,” she said, turning her back on the feeding nightmares. Her fatigue was evident by the wavering steps she took as she crossed the entryway back into the hut.

He didn’t need to be told twice.


	3. Part 1: II

##  II

The noise was no longer so unbearable, the winds’ focus now elsewhere. But the strange shrieking endured distantly, like the howl of a pack of wolves that could merely have been a storm -- if he didn’t know better by now.

“Selfish demon’s boy. It was a mistake to bring you here,” she muttered, replacing the heavy kettle over the fire to reheat water for the wounds they had inflicted on each other.

“What were those?” he asked, unable to mask the terror from his voice.

“You must know. They are the demons you trail behind you,” she answered simply. As though he had asked what day it was. “You deal with one demon, they all get the taste of blood on their lips and follow you around, hungry for their share. They gain purchase in these woods, and you trespassed into it. And they smelled you and wanted their due. Which was it you cut your feet for?”

“The wyrm of pestilence,” he answered shakily.

She huffed with vexation.. “So not even one that can give you a worthwhile gift,” she spat.

The corner of his upper lip rose in a querulous snarl. “Fuck you,” he fired back. “You know nothing of why I made the deal I did, or what it cost me.”

The glare she shot at him was livid. He tried desperately not to flinch. “I know what it costs. The price is always the same, though they may tell you differently. The price is all of you.”

“And how does a lonely little thing like you know so much about demons?” He folded his arms across his chest, stubborn. “How can you claim -- what was it --  _ dominion _ over them?”

Her nostrils flared. She set her feet, jutting her chin up in defiance and crossing her own arms, facing him in a standoff. For a moment she deliberated whether she should answer him at all. But something tugged at her. The image of him half-dead in the snow flickered in her memory, the cut soles of his feet that marked the deal he had made, and a kinship like she had felt for no other pierced her gut.

“How do you think,” she whispered darkly. “I paid the price.”

She turned back to the wreckage they had caused in their fray, snatching up the cloth on the floor, collecting the overturned pitcher and cup and laying it all by the fire.

“What--” he began, temperature rising in indignance. “Are you  _ angry _ with me? Those things wanted to kill me!”

“I am  _ furious _ with you!” she retorted. “I saved your goddamn life in the woods. At best you’d be dead if I hadn’t found you out there. If the demons hadn’t found you first. You woke up hale and warm in my hut, and you didn’t have the wits to realize that among all the things in this dark wood, I am the only one that isn’t untrustworthy. The only one that has no  _ option _ to be untrustworthy.”

His sneer fell like a mask from his face, replaced with a look of guilt and discomfort.

“That damn tribe of yours,” she snapped. “Was it they who taught you that all things can only be solved with violence?”

He felt a turning in his gut like an iron key. An urge to defend his tribe that soured immediately as he recalled that he was no longer part of them. Unable to think up an excuse for himself, his words fell breathlessly from his mouth. “ _ Yes _ ,” he admitted. “That is the only way we grow up knowing. Maybe it isn’t enough. But I have yet to learn another way.”

She sniffed, wiping her wrist against her face, saw it come away bloody. She turned to the fire, unable to look back at him. “I won’t excuse you for being unimaginative. Your tribe is cruel, and they killed many that I knew long ago.”

Belatedly, the question of her story prickled at him. How someone hardly older than himself had come to live this way, alone in demon-haunted woods, and come to wield such power over its inhabitants. He doubted she would answer him if he asked her now, with so much hatred cloying the air between them. And then he remembered that, given his recent exile, his recent deal with the demon of pestilence, the two of them shared more in common than was perhaps comfortable for him to admit.

He took a step toward the warmth. Something curdled in his stomach; the memories of his tribe that he called happy, simply for lack of knowing anything else. He spoke slowly. “I killed them,” he said. His voice dropped low. She froze, listening. “I killed my father. And his death left me no remorse. I burned what I could. I hated them and I did it. I tried to kill my mother, and failed. And the rest of them. So I am an exile. Without home and without family. Without a tribe. Without a name,” he concluded, surprising himself with the admission. “Perhaps you and I can find more similarities than differences between us.”

Their silence was only broken by the fire that crackled in the grate and the wind that rustled hungrily outside in the snow. She did not move, hugging her clothes around her, eyes fixed on the fire.

“Which one?” he asked.

“Which what?” she growled.

“Which oil will help those scratches I left on your arm.”

She turned to him in surprise, saw him kneeling on the floor, picking through the bottles of oil and poultice that had been scattered by their brawl. Her eyes were steady as a cat’s, calculating and reflecting fire. He met her gaze with submission, peering up through his brows. She watched him take a pair of deep breaths, his nostrils widening.

“Listen, I was -- I don’t know,” he stammered, deeply unused to his own vulnerability and having been forced to face it more than once in a single night. “I assumed you wanted to hurt me. We -- they -- my old tribe would never venture deep into these woods, and never after dark. We all knew the tales we were told from the cradle, of witches and creatures too foul to face with mere swords and fire. I didn’t -- I want --” he rolled his eyes, pouting at his own incapacity. “I’m sorry,” he burst out finally, like pulling a thorn from his thumb.

The snarl at the edge of her nose twitched, then slowly dropped. She turned back toward the fire. “The green bottle,” she said, and was silent. The kettle began to flutter a little song, and he went over to it, green bottle in hand, to pour its contents and the steaming water into a bowl.

He knelt before her, dipped the cloth into the scented water, took her calloused hand in his and began dabbing the little X on her palm first. Blocking the firelight, his face fell into shadow, a conflagration at the edges of his hair. His hands, reaching for her, were big, lean, incongruously delicate beneath the rough skin. With the black markings washed from around his eyes, she could see they were of such a pale grey they looked liked silver. His lashes were the color of honey.

“How am I supposed to trust you now,” she said; not a question, but an accusation. His first attempts at gentleness were clumsy, unfamiliar. She hissed through her teeth as the hot water touched cut flesh. He muttered a little apology, one that emerged more easily after the practice of the last.

“Like you said,” he answered, “at this moment, in this place, you and I don’t have the luxury of distrust.”

A little smile flickered at the corner of her mouth. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the shadows cast by the fire.

Another crash and shudder wracked the little hut. He glanced worriedly over to the door. “How long will -- whatever you did -- hold them back?”

“I don’t know. Tonight. Perhaps another night. They don’t hunt like this normally, in case you were wondering,” she said wryly. “I pass peaceful nights here on my own, and have for -- for some time.” She gulped. He politely didn’t ask her to clarify. “But they won’t leave now that they know where to find you. You are behind their lines, so to speak. You should leave as soon as there’s light.”

“And they will leave me alone once I’m free of the woods?”

“Yes,” she answered. “For the most part.”

He dipped the cloth once more in the scalding mixture. “How would I make them leave,” he asked tentatively, playing nonchalance, “if I -- if I were to stay?”

She looked at him with eyes keen as a hawk’s, seeing straight to the heart of what he said.

“That is simple,” she said. “Pay them what you owe.”

He let out a soft laugh. “Well, that won’t happen. At least not anytime soon. What I owe them is my mother, and I don’t think she can be defeated. She swore to kill me if she ever laid eyes on me again.”

He became aware that the girl was staring at him, thoughts clicking and whirring like gears behind her dark eyes.

“What?” he asked, genuinely curious what she thought.

She pinched her mouth together, shaking her head. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just -- it’s been such an awfully long time since I’ve had someone to talk to. Someone human, at any rate.”

His laughter surprised her, then fascinated her, like something shining and precious washed up on the muddy banks of a stream. She felt her own face soften, a little smile shaping her lips in response.

“Someone  _ human _ ?” he asked. “What else is there in these woods?”

“Many things,” she answered, growing conversational. “I don’t know all their names. The Hulder with her birch-bark skin and cow’s tail. The Gamayun with her feathered claws. Many are not cruel, though they are prone to mischief. If I lacked my magic, I do not know if they would treat me as they do. As one of them. I keep their company, but sometimes I… forget,” she said, her eyes traveling, going far into a past she had folded and locked away. “I forget what things humans talk of.”

“My mother used to say that I couldn’t shut up even if she paid me to,” he said, with a wry laugh. “Not that she would know; she never offered.”

The woman laughed unexpectedly, a short rush of air huffing out of her. It made him pause and look at her mouth, split open in a wide grin. He felt something swell like ripe grain in his chest. Some instinct made him reach up, touch the cloth to the blood around her smile. She froze, bashful and staring.

He shifted his hands down to the collar of her dress and she moved her hair, undoing the laces so that she could push down the fabric to where he had scratched her shoulder. Four deep, gouging nail-marks crossed her collarbone. He gulped as she bared her flesh and he pressed the cloth deeply, easing as she recoiled, finding the right pressure.

“Here,” she said, kneeling so that they faced one another equally. She began cleaning the blood off of his face, smeared everywhere around his nose and lips. “You look dreadful.”

“No one’s ever said  _ that _ to me before,” he said lightly, bouncing a single eyebrow upward. She rolled her eyes ever so slightly, laughing involuntarily through a look of withering skepticism. He realized curiously that he was flirting with her, and wondered at how he had progressed so rapidly from trying to kill her to trying to coax out another of her smiles.

He watched her. Her black eyes focused on her work. The sting from his wounds mixed with the sweetness of her touch stirred him in some new way. He tried to mirror her tenderness with his own hands.

She turned away from him, reaching for another cloth. As she twisted, the fabric of her dress fell low down, well past her shoulders. With a shock, he saw the tips of long, white scars lashed over her back. He winced, his cheeks burning with an odd shame, as though he had intruded on something painful and private in her life.

“Your back--” he began, and she hoisted the cloth back over her shoulders, her expression suddenly contorted and hurt. His hands hovered, not sure if he should touch her at such a vulnerable moment. Clues began to knit together in his mind, all beginning to point at last to the answer to how a young woman like her ended up alone in the woods. Something red and vicious uncoiled in his chest.

“Who did that to you?” he asked. An edge glinted in his voice.

She dipped her fresh cloth into the bowl before wringing it out, a painful smile pressing her lips together. “I envied your tribe, you know,” she confessed, “though they hunted among my people. We--they-- were peaceful, undefended, and so easy targets. I thought I knew, once, what was right and wrong. That peace and war, friend and enemy, were well-defined and easy to distinguish. And then I made a deal,” she said slowly.

He had sunk down beside her, no longer cleaning her wounds, but holding the cloth in his hands, listening. Each word she spoke deepened the sinking feeling in his chest.

“I wanted power. I wanted knowledge. I wanted to stop being hunted and to… to  _ win _ ,” she said finally. “So I searched, following old wives’ tales until I made a plan, and left my tribe and dealt with one of the demons who dwelled in these woods. I wanted the ability to control them, to use them as protection. I was careful with my wording. I knew how these things worked. I was given dark magic to command, and I took the knowledge back with me.

“But demons have a flair for the ironic. I asked for the ability to control dark power. And this I was given. But I did not anticipate what came with it.”

She lifted her head, looked at the door to her hut, where beyond, the sounds of winds, now lulled to an eerie whisper, remained.

“What came with it -- what do you mean?” he asked. His skin prickled.

It was as though she had stopped breathing, as though she had become a woman broken down, unmoving. Then she heaved air into her lungs like a weight. “My tribe wanted to be sure I never forgot how they regard a dark magician,” she concluded. “That once I’d dealt with demons, I was more than just unwelcome. I was monstrous.”

She tugged the cloth of her dress a little tighter around her, pulling the ties into a knot, concealing the white branches of scars on her back.

“I remember once, before I found this place, seeing another tribe with their warmth and their drink. Perhaps it was yours. I’ll never know. I was hunched in the snow, only daring to watch and want that warmth from a distance. I saw them dancing, feasting, laughing,” she said bitterly. She watched the blood seeping out of the cloth in the bowl of hot water, lazy as summer clouds. Her eyes grew dark and heavy as lead. “The things your tribe did to build that companionship -- they were awful things. You bound yourselves to each other through the destruction of everyone and everything else. But in that ring of firelight -- there was happiness. Or so it seemed to me. A kind of joy, a kind of wealth, a kind of plenty. And for a girl starving and cold and alone, dragging my feet in the woods, that became all I ever wanted.”

In that moment, the song of her loneliness, ringing in his ears and rhyming with his own, became unbearable. Some unnameable force compelled him to compassion, and he brought his hand beneath her bowed head, nudging her face up to meet his. Their eyes met; cautious wild beasts recognizing their own kind.

She blinked, shook her head away from his grip and stood suddenly. She turned away from him, went to another corner of the hut to distract from her own thoughts.

“It wasn’t really that joyful,” he interjected. “Or plentiful. Hunger was no stranger to us, and more often than not, we fought amongst ourselves. For stupid things. As I did,” he admitted. Her absence left him strangely cold, and he shifted closer to the hearth. The embers pulsed, the log in the grate eaten open to its ruddy heart. He dragged a chipped piece of pine from the stack beside the fire, coaxed it into the warmth until the flame took. “I think this small hut feels more like home than life with my tribe ever did,” he confessed, surprising himself with the truth of it.

She returned with a little pot-bellied cauldron, filled with lumpy chunks of root, a fistful of dried leaves, and the whole skinned rabbits inside. She poured water from the kettle, hung the soup over the fire. “Was life in your tribe really so terrible?” she asked, smiling a little at him, willing the mood to lighten. “That a bloody nose and a supper of scrawny rabbits is such a luxury?”

He chuckled. “I suppose not. But to be constantly on the move, to live with those who respect nothing but physical strength… I wouldn’t exactly call it cozy.”

She had her hands propped akimbo, thumbs against her back, stretched up as she looked down at him.

“What?” he asked at the expression she made, the calculating look that he had begun, already, to recognize.

“I never asked you your name,” she said simply. “I suppose there wasn’t much chance, what with all the fighting and insults.”

Looking up at her, light pooled in his eyes, concealing his thoughts.

“It’s--” he began, then hesitated. He seemed uncomfortable. She waited. “It’s Montag.”

The smile he gave her was spiked with rancor. He shrugged, brushing the bitterness away in a manner that betrayed his familiarity with it.

“I was born on a Monday,” he explained. “I think my mother believed that trait was as worthwhile as any other thing about me.”

Her brows stitched together, regarding him. She stirred the pot, set the spoon aside. “Why would she believe that?”

He shook his head. “Nothing impressed my mother. She was the leader of our tribe and got that way by being without mercy. I feared her. We all feared her. I think even my father did. She kept us ravenous and cowed as a pack of hunting hounds. And we followed her, we killed for her, because there were no other options.” The corner of his nose twisted, a touch of loathing he had never expressed before now, harsh words passed in confidence with an outsider who couldn’t trade them in for his mother’s favor. “Until I dealt with the wyrm in the woods and tried to kill her. Perhaps it was -- what was the word you used before? Unimaginative. Perhaps it was. But it was the only way out I could see.”

A cold nausea gripped his stomach, fighting with his anger like a pair of venomous snakes. His breathing grew labored in an attempt to calm himself.

“It can’t be my name anymore. It doesn’t feel right.”

“Why not?” she asked.

He tried to put it into words; the need he had to leave his past behind. “It was the name my mother gave me. And my father. One is dead by my hand and the other will hunt me through my life. And every time I hear that name, I think of it on her lips, curling with disdain. I think of her disappointment, and her rage. I feel her eyes watching.”

A little whisper of the wind buffeted the hut, and for a moment, it sounded like the last words he had heard his mother say to him.  _ Run _ .

He felt something soft against his fingers, and looked down to see that she had taken his hand in hers. Her eyes looked coppery in the firelight, set in the deep blue of her painted face.

“Then choose a name. It makes no matter to me. I’ve only just met you, after all.”

His laughter scattered light like beads on a cut string. He looked into her eyes. “I’ll think of one. For now, I suppose I am no one.”

She smiled at him, squeezed his hand. “We all start as no one,” she said cryptically, a little facetious smile in her eyes. Then her face fell, became pensive. “I’m sorry that I judged you.” She chewed her lip. “I understand how it feels; how all sense can break, where pain and family is concerned. I--” she struggled. “I cannot hope to explain. But I understand.”

He swallowed back a lump in his throat. Wildly, without thinking, he raised her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss into the soft skin of her palm.

His eyes closed. Her hands were calloused and warm, small within his own.

Her heart pounded with sudden gravity, rooting her to the spot. She watched the earnestness in his face, how tightly he squeezed his eyelids, as though ashamed to show affection. The way he brought both hands to cup hers to his lips like a rare and precious bird. She felt his emptiness ringing with hers like a plucked string.

Something fierce and tragic gripped his heart, and he suddenly felt small, somehow both safe and defenseless as he had never known. He opened his eyes and saw her expression, one that was impossible to fathom, but he felt her hand still tightly gripping his. He knew that whatever she felt, whatever she thought, it sang in tune with what resounded in his chest, new and bright and brazen.

She pulled her hand from him, rattled, standing quickly. With determination, she grabbed the wooden spoon and stirred the fragrant broth bubbling, oblivious and merry, over the flames. She said nothing for a long while, and he stared, brows knitting together, nonplussed by her standoffishness.

“Where will you go,” she asked lightly. “When you leave tomorrow, where will you go?”

He blinked rapidly. “What--” he began, shaking his head. Her sudden change in demeanor shot like a dart through his chest. He stood to face her and she turned back to him, planting her feet and jutting out her chin as she looked up at him, angry and defensive once more.

“What did--” he stammered. “Did I do something wrong?”

Her mouth pulled down in a helpless frown. “Yes,” she breathed, brows furrowing up at the center. Then firmer, a bark of warning, “Yes! What do you --  _ expect  _ is supposed to happen now?”

She looked momentarily at her hand, the one he had kissed, before crushing it into a fist and dropping it to her side. Her eyes snapped. He recoiled, the budding feeling in his chest beginning to wither. In his head, his mother’s voice sang.  _ You’ll never be anything more than a burden. _

“I’m going to ignore it, and I’m going to forget it. It is something I cannot afford.”

His face crinkled, gobsmacked and hurt. “What do you mean? You can afford anything you want. You have no ties, as I do.”

“You’ve seen the winds hunting,” she snarled at him. “A boy beset by demons living between these four walls, surrounded by their hungry maw? How stupid are you?”

She knew she was lashing out irrationally at him; the desperation of a caged animal. But habit made it impossible to stop; impossible to even consider the chance.

“Then leave,” he blurted. “Come with me. Just to be free of this place, if for no other reason. There’s a world out there, beyond these woods, where you could make yourself anew.”

She put the wooden spoon down with more force than was necessary. “The world wanted nothing to do with me, and so I came here,” she said. She was obstinate, but he could see tears starting in her eyes. They flashed dangerously as she turned to him. “I could call things down upon your head with a word,” she threatened. “Is that what you want? I am no one’s companion. Yours least of all, demon’s boy.”

“So what will you do, then? Stay here forever, alone and chewing rabbits in the snow?”

“I should have let you die out there,'' she growled. “I should have let them pick your bones apart.”

“And why didn’t you?”   


She wanted to shout the answer at him, but her words fell like stones back down her throat. “Because,” she pushed out at last. “Because I  _ was _ you. Alone and left for dead, hated by those I knew, and with no one left in the world to care for me.”

Through his heart, some little barb had caught. Some thorn that she had pushed in to the root.

She hung her head, no longer angry, merely wounded and diminished by exhaustion and shame. She walked to the far corner of her hut, moving a little curtain aside, revealing a bed lined with furs.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I do not think I am fit to leave this place. That is no fault of yours.”

He watched her, wishing there was something he could say. Wishing for some way to change her mind, to convince her that there was a different life, and at least one person who would see her welcome in it. A welcome tether in the wide open world he was to plummet into. Two exiles, he thought, could accomplish much more together than alone.

“Help yourself to the soup. When you leave tomorrow, keep the sun to your sword-arm. Travel north. That will get you out of this forest. Then you may do what you wish. I will not stop you, and no demon will trouble you in these woods in daylight.”

“Wait,” he said. She turned her head slightly, so that he could see just the beginnings of her profile. The blue stain on her face hid any expression at this distance. He gulped. “I don’t know your name,” he realized aloud.

She swayed on the spot, then turned back toward the bed. “Ombria,” she said, quiet and dark as a spell. Then she drew the curtain behind her, and he was alone.


	4. Part 1: III

##  III

He didn’t dream of the night-wolves or the wind-horses or of blood or magic or birch branches on his skin. He dreamt of fire. Flames reflecting off the snow, bright as the surface of the sun.

In the space between his dreams, he heard the winds calling, his mother’s voice weaving into the whisper of snow against the windowpane.  _ Run _ , the winds said.  _ Run _ .

Sleep lapped over him in fitful waves, then finally dragged him beyond his fear into oblivion.

~

Light burned through his dreams and woke him, little splinters of sun falling on his face. The world in which he lay was so quiet and unmoving, he thought he must still be dreaming. Slowly the tumult of the night before crept back into his memory. He raised his hand slowly, saw the little X scored at the base of his right thumb. He folded his other fingers down and brushed it experimentally.

The woman. The witch. Ombria, he remembered. He turned his head, looking toward the bed where she had disappeared the night before, saw the curtain drawn, the furs empty.

_ Where will you go _ , she had asked. He sat up with a groan. He had no idea. He had little more than his sword and his two bare hands, and not even a name to call his own anymore.

He pulled his boots on, reattached his pauldron and buckled his sword at his hip. By daylight, the hut seemed so incredibly normal, as though magic and monsters and spells and demons were a world away. By the door he saw a bundled broom of birch branches. He reached out to it, touched his fingertips to the little knotty twigs. He stood that way for a long moment, his attention fallen onto the little, warm details of her home as though weighed by gravity.

He shook his head, determined to keep his eyes lifted toward the future and forget what lay behind.

The sun reflected off the snow as it misted from the roof. Warm flakes dripped from the trees and glittered in the light. The morning struck fire from his hair. All the world seemed new and bright before him.

He felt a whisper of spells crossing the wood of her door, tingling at his touch. A little sigil was scratched into the wood; a circle with eight irregular spokes, hatched with lines and arcs. He felt the grain of it a moment before turning away.

He did as she bade him, and kept the sun to his sword-shoulder, and didn’t look back.

~

“You’re blushing,” came a voice from behind her, clacking like the layers of tree bark.

Ombria stomped her way through the snow, trying to ignore the Hulder, clutching the rabbit fur of her long shawl tightly around her shoulders. From the corner of her eye she saw the figure, dropping down from the birches.

“Oh, ignoring us, are you?” the Hulder teased. “Lost in thought? Day-dreaming, perhaps?”

Ombria shot a sidelong glance that promised no idle threats. It made the Hulder giggle.

“We all saw him there, entering our woods. We were hungry and waiting for nightfall when you snatched him from us. Tasty thing. There are many who would have loved to take him.”

Ombria turned toward the girl with the cow’s tail and wide sheep’s pupils, held up her palm.. The Hulder paused at the sight of the cut on her hand, as though pushed backward. She crouched defensively, eyes on the little red X.

“He has the protection of my blood until dark falls. If he knows what’s best for him, he will have left this wood long before then.”

“If he knows what’s best, hmm?” she asked, cautious, her eyes glinting like a predator. “Oh, that he does. He saw the winds hunting last night, hunting him. He’s not likely to forget that.”

Ombria continued her walk, making for the snowy banks of the steam, kneeling to break the ice with the back end of her knife.

“But could it be -- you envy him,” the Hulder continued. She fluttered the birch bark of her skin like a bird fluffing its feathers. “You envy his leaving, and regret his leaving you.”

Ombria pursed her lips. “He is no one to me.”

“No one, yes. On this earth, isn’t it no one who loves you? On this earth, isn’t it no one who matters to you?” The Hulder’s laugh was pretty and mocking as birdsong. It made Ombria furious. She flung a clump of snow in retaliation and continued to bash at the black ice, satisfied when it splintered into cold, dark water.

“Just leave me be,” Ombria said.

“Had enough society for one day? I’m sure you’re eager to get back to your silence and your solitude. Those are the friends you love best, after all.”

Ombria barked an eldritch word, left the trees shuddering in warning. It only made the girl smile, creeping up closer, tugging at the little bronze beads in Ombria’s hair.

“Clothe yourself in power, but underneath is still that tender human marrow. Crunch, crunch.” The Hulder’s laugh was strangled short as Ombria dove, squeezing the girl’s neck between her arms.

“Do not forget who I am,” she bellowed. “My place is here, with the other monsters like you.” The Hulder choked a laugh, wriggling in her arms. She relented, and Ombria let her free to scurry back up the nearest tree.

“All right,” she said, rubbing her neck. “I can see you’re not in the mood for teasing. What transformations has love wrought on your little human frame! It makes you smell foreign in these woods.”

Ombria filled her waterskins, hoisted them over her shoulder, taciturn and temperamental as she trudged back from the waterside.

“What’s stopping you?” the Hulder asked, bursting up and making Ombria jump back as she appeared in her path.

“What?”

“What’s stopping you from leaving? Nothing keeps you bound here save your own bitterness. As powerful a captor as it may be.”

Ombria tried to respond, but no words came. She remembered the image from that morning as she slipped from her house, seeing his form curled innocent as a dog on the furs of her floor. The morning light burnishing his hair, rolling over his skin like melting beeswax. So perfect and simple, as though he had always been in her home, as though his form had already left an imprint on her life as permanently as her footsteps had worn the floor. As though she would wake up every morning to see his sleeping face.

She fumbled with her answer, and the Hulder blinked with a patience that was almost pitying.

“Where would I go?” Ombria asked, her voice diminished as a child’s.

The Hulder’s odd animal eyes stared back. She tilted her head sideways, nearly upside-down like an owl’s.

“Does it matter?” The Hulder could hear the young woman’s fear, could scent it like spilt blood in the snow.

“How can I live outside these woods? I am hardly human. How can I find the girl I was before I knew what demons were? The world outside will not love me. It will tear my clothes and whip my back raw and send me into the snow. It will leave me ashamed and bleeding and alone.”

For all the mischief held there, the Hulder’s eyes deepened, looked dark and endless as the night. She met Ombria’s gaze as solemnly as the black ice lying over the stream.

“The world need not love you,” she answered simply. “And you will live there as you live here. With difficulty. But perhaps you will not live alone. Demon’s girl, mortal woman. Stay or go; who is it that you wish to be?”

Ombria’s steps turned toward her home, followed the path of her own footprints. Possibility beaded and brimmed with each step forward; that beyond these woods there was a world, that she had a companion, that there were things she had never believed herself deserving of that she might have. Promise buzzed so hot and sudden it made her dizzy with it. She was rushing, the snow fluffing beneath her boots, the merry songbird laughter of the Hulder fading behind her in the woods.

When she saw the boot-prints leading away from her door and not returning, her heart sank. At the threshold she knew. Inside was cold, was silent, was empty. And only the impression of the boy’s body was left in the furs along her floor.

The day stretched long and the shadows crept out from hiding, and when night fell again she was alone, as she had been before. She closed every door and window and shutter so that not even the beasts that roamed her woods could see how she cried.

By the following evening, she did not feel his absence any more than ice feels the falling snow.

  
  



	5. Part 2

#  Part 2

  
  


Ulrik was dead. That much was clear.

The three soldiers stood in tableau over the body in the spacious commander’s tent, the pallet piled high with furs that had done little to defend the man beneath them against the fever that followed the infection of his wound. At one end was a woman, compact but strong, her scalp shaved and tattooed, lip caught between her teeth. The blond man in the middle stood perhaps half a head taller, slender as the blade attached to his side, his arms crossed and his lower lip pushed out in a thoughtful pout. The third man towered head and shoulders above the other two, his expression foul and his massive arms akimbo.

The wounds the commander had sustained in their last skirmish had gone untreated, festering slowly. The old mercenary had been so determined to keep a stiff upper lip that the corruption had spread unknown to the rest, until, camped in a field along the edge of a dark and forbidding wood, he grew grey and raving and finally silent.

Ulrik had called his three strongest soldiers to his tent in his final moments and entrusted to them a baffling secret. A secret the three now pondered over their late commander’s cooling body.

“Leave it to the old ox to die just before we reach the thing he promised us,” Pipp grumbled, her face blank with defeat.

“Mmm,” Lucio agreed. “He spent weeks convincing us it was a good idea to come here. Weeks. Keeping his secrets and assuring us this would be worth it in the end.”

Silence settled like a carrion crow on their shoulders, looming and begging them to voice the question dangling like bait in all of their minds.

“Do you think he was telling the truth?” Pipp shivered. A rustle of discomfort went through the three of them. “A rumor, he said it was. Little more than a story. But what he said, why we trekked out here… do you think it could be possible?”

Lucio’s eyes flickered flat and distant. A memory buzzed like an errant harp string in the back of his mind. He knew better than to share that he knew very well the answer to her question.

“I don’t know,” he lied. “But possible or not, the man seemed lucid enough when he told us.”

“We’ve been on half rations for three days,” Pipp whined, breaking the solemn mood. “To think. We could be up north tucking into veal pies by now.”

The explosive scoff from above made the other two jump. “Fucking cowards,” Bendik growled.

In sync, Lucio and Pipp whipped their heads to the left and then up, regarding their heretofore silent comrade.

“If the two of you are content to sit here and whimper instead of take this chance, it’s clear that only one of us is fit to take his position.”

Lucio arched a single, irritated brow. “Is it now,” he answered coolly. “The commander is hardly cold in his bed and you’re eager to chase a fairy tale through the forest? How uncharacteristically whimsical of you.”

Bendik huffed in response and turned to walk out of the tent. “Take care of the body,” he ordered.

Lucio and Pipp exchanged peeved glances, lips pressed tightly together.

“I’ll get the shovel,” Pipp said, leaving Lucio alone with the body.

He looked at the older man’s face, crumpled and pallid in death. So unnervingly still.  _ War is not for winning _ , Ulrik had reminded them often, with the businesslike austerity that made him well-trusted among mercenaries, even while ensuring he would never be well-liked.  _ It is for surviving. _

Looking down at Ulrik’s corpse, Lucio saw firsthand the obvious implication of such an axiom: that you can only survive it for so long.

It was best not to get too philosophical, Lucio thought, shaking his head. It was likely they would all be dead soon; essentially guaranteed under Bendik’s blundering command. And Lucio would have to think. What Ulrik had entrusted to them sounded like folly, he knew, but even so, the news would spread through the camp quickly. Most would desert, he expected. But there would be a few enterprising enough to take the risk and follow the rumor. The rumor that Lucio knew was true. 

Of a witch said to live in these woods, who held demons at her command…


	6. Part 2: IV

##  IV

Ulrik’s camp was a mere gaggle of fifty or so men and women who were hard and desperate enough to know that, when war was your livelihood, sooner or later you would find a violent death at the end of it. He had paid them fairly enough, expecting those who worked for him to keep curiosity to a minimum. A good mercenary did not ask questions. Where they were bound, who they were being paid to fight, or for what purpose they were to fight them -- these were questions to which Ulrik was tight-fisted with answers. But there had always been meat and mead, a few copper pieces and the warmth of a fire. And, knowing little different, they had all grown accustomed to it.

What led them to these remote, frozen, and mountain-ringed tundras of the South remained a mystery to them. They trusted his devotion to good business and his vague promises that here they would find a gift more handsome than any they could win on the battlefield. Perhaps it was in part fueled by his invisible fever. For what he recounted in his final moments were mere whispers, of how a band of fighters with little to lose might gain the favor of the demon of War with help from a dark sorceress said to be able to control even the uncanniest of beasts.

They had approached the woods just as night soaked the sky, building their camp in a mossy meadow far from the treeline. As the first stars appeared, green lights began to curl like smoke above them, shuddering and flaring and making their blood churn with superstition as they huddled around their central bonfire. From within the trees, some of the soldiers claimed they heard wailing. Others were not so sure, but kept their peace nonetheless.

Though he had revealed no finite plans, Ulrik at the very least had known the power of a good story to motivate them to follow him to such a place. It was a necessity if he was to parley with such a power. There were no armies here, he had told them. No villages to sack, no raiding tribes that they were contracted to rout. No promise of payment. Nothing but a tantalizing taste of power that he laid sweet and heavy on their tongues. He promised this. He promised that. They would become unkillable. Invincible. Rich.

His dying unceremoniously before they could collect had put something of a damper on that enthusiasm.

A number of them defected immediately, the promise of military might and future wealth grown too hazy to warrant staying in such a remote and frankly unsettling locale. Others stayed to divide Ulrik’s possessions amongst themselves, unashamed of scavenging from the dead. Bendik, a man whose colossal stature and sour disposition meant he could take first pick without any objection from the rest, went straight for the old commander’s bottles of mead. Coins evaporated from pockets and condensed in others, boots went from cold feet to warm. Then Ulrik’s body was wrapped in his cloak, and tossed with all the available decorum of a mercenary in a shallow ditch downwind from their camp. Hardly a day had passed from the heat of fever to the chill of the grave, and his body along with his ambitions were laid to rest where he had ignominiously fallen.

His plans, however, remained; and in little time began to spread.

~

“The demon of War,” Bendik recounted. He had collected a handful of followers around the bonfire, wasting no time in sharing Ulrik’s secret. It was a hasty swipe to position himself as the new authority. “This is how we move forward. No matter that we had so many deserters -- the more fool them!”

Strange green fires bloomed toward them out of the dark sky. The aurora flared suddenly in intensity, flickering and tipped with white and purple. Until then the mercenaries had made a point of ignoring them, afraid of whatever evil, true or imagined, lived within those woods and might be responsible for the ghostly wisps traversing the sky. But as the lights began to paint the tundra emerald around them, they felt the tingling of an omen. The tantalizing whiff of  _ what if _ that lingered in the frosty air, emboldening them.

“We all know this life. The blood and the endless marches and the shit wages. But we have a chance to build for ourselves a different life.”

An approving ripple went through the soldiers. Cold, hungry, and in the habit of facing their own mortality head-on, the promise Bendik made was far too good to refuse.

“Ulrik was sure of it,” he lied; knowing that skepticism was too costly a fee if he was to purchase their support. “And I say we finish what he intended to start. We find the witch. Either she helps us make this deal or we offer her blood as payment for it. And with the favor of the demon of War, I offer you this: a future where victory is inevitable. What is there for us to lose?”

In the shadows beyond the ring of clamoring supporters, Lucio’s lips pinched together in a pout. He sipped a cup of stale beer, all that was left of their rations, and continued sharpening his sword.

“Not bad,” he muttered. “He sure makes it sound tempting.”

“Look at him,” Pipp grumbled. “Thinks he’s commander already. Enterprising bastard.”

Lucio met her glance with a little shrug. “He can think what he likes.”

Pipp cast a look back over to the crowd around the fire, rousing with Bendik’s words. “Why aren’t you over there, then?” she asked. “Making your case alongside him? Garnering support of your own? I thought you might want to lead us, now that Ulrik is gone.”

Lucio was silent a moment, pondering. “What else is there for me to say? He’s gotten the soldiers all whipped into a frenzy. I’m in no hurry to step in the middle of it.”

“As if Bendik had any idea how to take control. He can hardly take control of his coin around a gambling table.”

Lucio’s smile was grim. “I think all that matters to him now is that the person leading isn’t me.”

“And what if he succeeds?” Pipp asked him. “What if he secures this deal and that wins him leadership over our crew? Then what?”

Lucio shrugged, appearing nonchalant. But in his eyes, silver wheels were turning. “Then I concede. He’s won the right to command and I go back to being a simple mercenary, nothing changes and I at least have an income.”

She squinted at him, went back to honing the edge of one of her hand-axes. “This is one of those times when you and I pretend we both don’t know that you’re lying,” she taunted. “You have a plan.”

He smiled. “Not so much a plan as the desire not to interfere while I formulate one. I’ll let Bendik pull his theatrics and see where it leads. Besides, muscling that ogre out of the limelight isn’t something I’m too keen on.”

Pipp snorted, but the sound was swallowed up in the sudden mess of soldiers scurrying to and fro, collecting weapons and donning their bits of leather armor. The light from the bonfire was eclipsed suddenly, and the two looked up at their companion. Lucio sighed and stood.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Bendik blared. “Our future is before us. And you sit here with your back turned.”

Lucio’s eyes flicked quickly toward the dark wood. Faintly he heard the memory of demon winds, hunting him by night. “Now?” he asked, incredulous. “In the dead of night?”

“Now. What use is it to wait? The sooner we possess this power, the sooner we can move on from this place. Or have you become fond of it? Remind you of home, little Southerling?”

Lucio’s eyelids fluttered in an aggressive eyeroll. It was never much of a mystery, he supposed, how a straightforward, muscular type like Bendik became the natural enemy of the lithe, devious type who thought with his head instead of his fists.

_ That damn tribe of yours. Was it they who taught you that all things can only be solved with violence? _

Lucio hastily blinked back the memory.

“I assume I don’t have to tell you how to hunt,” Lucio condescended. “‘ _ If it moves, it dies _ ’ or something of that ilk. Enjoy your quarry. I, on the other hand, am going to have a drink. Toast our dead commander, and all that. I’ll keep vigil here with the camp, keep things tidy for your return.”

Bendik gave him a look that was something less than complimentary. He crossed his arms over the broad leather expanse of his chest, glinting with buckles. The corner of his nose lifted in undisguised disdain. He loomed over the smaller man, making a thoroughly unnecessary show of puffing out his muscles. Lucio, for his part, seemed unconcerned and unimpressed.

“You always were a little weasel. Never fight fair if you can find a better way out of it. I’ll never know what Ulrik or the other men saw in you. Perhaps nothing more than your pretty blond hair and your fondness for spending nights on your knees.”

The sound of Pipp sharpening her axe abruptly halted, the air gone tense as an overwound lute string. Lucio’s smile was chilly. One brow arched upward. “I would have said it was my charm,” he suggested.

“And I expect you think that will win you command of this troupe? Think again, you wretched brat. Why would they follow a man who cowers back at camp, too afraid of ghosts in the woods and a fight with a woman? I see right through you, and I’ll make sure the rest all do too. You’ll be running off with your tail between your legs before the week is out. In the meantime, I have other business to attend to.”

Lucio’s expression made an attempt at looking contrite. It succeeded instead in only looking strained. “You’ve found me out,” he conceded. “A coward, through and through. So you can be sure that I won’t trouble you in your midnight hunt through the haunted woods. And if you succeed -- well, that’s better for all of us.” His composure loosened. “You have my full support,” he finished silkily.

Bendik made a thunderous snap of his fingers to alert his cohorts, not bothering with parting pleasantries, and moved out toward the forest. Pipp rose with an apologetic look, picking up her twin hand-axes and jogging to follow Bendik’s party.

Lucio’s gaze did not leave their retreating backs, not until they had disappeared beneath the darkness of the trees. Distantly, he heard a wind start up, hissing a threat through the trees. He sheathed his sword and withdrew to the furs of his tent.


	7. Part 2: V

##  V

In the bitter dawn, Lucio left silent prints in the snow. Morning had seemed ages in coming, but he knew he couldn’t set foot in those woods in the darkness. The snow-covered mountains faded to blue around him, huddling on either side of the woods below. The campsite was abandoned and the land around it felt like some wild, watching thing, holding its breath in the icy morning air. None of the others had returned yet.

Lucio buckled the leather strap at his throat and the baldric across his chest, adjusting the bronze pauldron over his left shoulder and the slim sword secured at his hip. He tugged the collar of his fur-lined jerkin closer to his skin, muffling his mouth and nose against the cold with a length of red cloth. Clouds hung heavy overhead, pressing down against the horizon, trickling snow in the directionless grey-gold light. As soon as the sun spiked above the mountains, he slipped from his tent, padding along softly as a fox as he threaded between the trees.

As daylight began to splash into the woods, they felt peaceful, unremarkable. Trees bowed under the weight of snow and he wandered deeper, unsure where to set his feet to find the little hut. He passed occasional signs of the other soldiers, clumsy tracks, a spatter of blood and feathers where one of them must have caught a grouse. In the labyrinth of trees he began to feel lost, regretting coming here, and had just turned back toward his footprints when he saw it, plain as day, nestled innocently beneath the snow.

From the front door there were tracks, soft boot-prints leading away but not back. At the sight of her threshold, familiarity and warmth washed over him, made his breath sink deeper in his chest. He walked up to the door, pressed his palms against the spoked sigil carved into the wood. Some strange impulse made him lean in, lay his cheek against the grain. He felt a little buzz of magic, her magic, whispering protection and warding and fortitude, heating his hands with a strange security. A word shivered in his mind, and he was unsure if it was his thought or hers that formed it.  _ Home _ .

“War comes soon to this place,” croaked a voice from behind him. He whirled, saw a shape hunched over like a bundle of reeds and pond-grasses, dripping incongruously into the snow. He backed against the door, drawing his sword. The thing laughed, rose up, shook reeds from its face like hair hanging all the way to the frosty ground. The face was perfect and oval as a mask, and its body was naked, neither male nor female, apparently unbothered by the cold, the legs and arms covered with what looked like tree bark.

“No need to get angry,” the creature crooned. “War comes soon to this place. Or perhaps it already has. War comes to all places, eventually. As you should know.” The thing showed teeth like little icicles, chilling him to the bone.

He reached up carefully, untucked the red cloth from around his face, let it fall.

“Are you a demon?” he asked tentatively. The thing laughed again.

“Perhaps,” it answered, then, “No. Not what you mean by it, anyway. I am no servant of the Devil or his friends, and there are other powers on this earth than them, though they would rather it were not so. I just like to see the stories unfold.”

“A monster, then. One of the beasts she told me roam these woods by daylight.”

The thing shrugged innocently. “Like meets like, I see.”

Lucio frowned. “I doubt it,” he replied, looking the strange thing up and down.

The creature eyed him curiously, unoffended. “Hmm. Perhaps not yet. But you will be. Distorted, as I have been, to fit into the stories people tell. As she will be. None of it is true, but what do the stories care? Demon’s boy. Light-bringer. Lucio.” It smiled knowingly.

He squinted at the thing. “How do you know my name?”

“Oh, I know both of your names, demon’s boy. ‘ _ Monday’s child is fair of face, _ ’ or so the saying goes. And I see they were not lying, at least not where you’re concerned.” The creature crouched again, long limbs unfolding and flexing talons, showing eyes with pupils barred black that reminded Lucio of a frog’s. “It’s funny, isn’t it? How you humans think it is the light that casts the shadows, but you, oh, you are proof that the opposite is also true. Does she know? Did you come to tell her? Or to warn her, that War comes soon to this place, and she had best prepare?”

“I don’t understand,” he said, fear giving way to simple exasperation. “What do you want with me? Or with her?”

The thing laughed like the creak of unoiled armor. “Ahh, questions! So unaccustomed to asking them that you don’t know the right ones to pick. What do I want with you? Nothing. You are nothing to me. Your stories, yours and hers, will go elsewhere, but they both pause in my backyard for just this breath. And it is fun for me to watch.”

“My story,” he scoffed. “What use is a story for me? And what do you mean, my story and hers?”

“Come now,” said the beast, tilting its head to the side curiously, curling its flawless face deeper into its dripping, grassy hair. “You must know. You may be a great fool, but even you must know.”

“Know what?” he spat.

“Why you came here,” it answered. “Why you returned. Why you left the safety of your camp and the simple world of a soldier for the woods filled with witches and demons and monsters like me. You must know.”

Something prowled in his chest, clawed and amber-eyed like a tigress.  _ Two exiles _ , he remembered. Behind a secret door in his heart he knew that he had come to warn her, to pay a debt to her for having saved his life. The recognition that what he felt was actual affection made him uneasy, and he chose to ignore it and instead ask a question of utility.

“You said that War comes soon to this place. My… companions came here in search of it. Some of them ventured into the forest to seize it. To seize her. Did they find what they sought? Is it even possible, to make a deal with the demon of War?”

The thing seemed to consider, juggling answers in its head. “It is possible,” it answered at last. “War accepts bribes, but their favor is not cheap. It is always this way,” the thing said lightly. “Humans seek power and often stumble in the taking.”

It looked him in the eye, creeping closer so that its polished face was opposite his. Sunlight caught in its gaze like the glint of minnows in a muddy stream. Lucio felt the wood of the door press into his back as he recoiled. It sneered and shuddered the bark on its skin.

“But not you,” it concluded. “And not her. Your downfall will not be in the taking. It is something else that will spill your blood.” The look on its face turned almost loving, soft. “Power is what you seek, but not what you want. What you want is in that house. What you want is that which makes you weak. What you want has a blue-painted brow and breaks your heart and cradles it close with kisses warm like summer rain. You know this. You must know this.”

His sword arm had dropped guard completely, the point of the blade dragging in the snow. He was too baffled to remember to feel threatened, too shaken to think of defending himself. Something overwhelmed him, and he collapsed involuntarily to his knees.  _ Home _ . He felt it like a heartbeat in the rough wood behind his head. He closed his eyes, saw the sunlight burn red behind his lids.  _ Home _ .

“Go home then, demon’s boy,” the creature taunted. “Go back to your camp, it does not matter. You will find her anyway. It is what you wanted, isn’t it? Your men will come for her soon, or perhaps they already have? I cannot remember. Your companions are waiting for you, waiting for her, waiting for War to begin.”

Lucio opened his eyes. The thing had gone, leaving not even a speckle of water droplets in the snow where it had stood. He turned and the hut, too, had vanished. The sun was well above the horizon now, and all he saw that broke the quiet sleep of the woods were his own footprints meandering through the snow.

He rose, shaken, and hurried to follow them back to his camp.


	8. Part 2: VI

##  VI

He heard sounds of commotion before he even reached the line of tents. Picking up his pace, he tried to look inconspicuous as he passed the other soldiers. Their attention was elsewhere; a mix of apprehension and excitement buzzing through the camp. Ulrik’s supposed myth had been found.

“The witch did not come along easily,” Pipp huffed, catching up to Lucio’s broad strides toward the nucleus of all the chaos. “A group of twelve was found dead in the wood, killed by who knows what beasts that prowled at night. She herself killed five of Bendik’s men and injured another four before we subdued her. Quick as a viper, they said she was, but there were too many of us. I heard their screaming and the others came running.”

“What about her?” Lucio asked, his eyes wild, uncaring of the heavy losses to their remaining number. “I mean--” he caught himself, correcting. “Has she said anything? Will she call the demon for us?”

Pipp shrugged, making a worried face in the direction of the old commander’s tent. The red cloth seemed to quake with the sounds of crashing and caterwauling inside, Bendik’s bassy voice shouting itself hoarse above the din. “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Pipp ventured.

Before he’d made the conscious decision to do so, Lucio was at the entrance, reaching for the tent flap.

“Are you out of your mind?” Pipp hissed beside him, reaching out to stay his hand. Her eyes widened at him, gesturing toward the hellish sounds coming from inside the tent. “I’m staying out here, thank you,” Pipp concluded.

Lucio paused, suddenly cognizant of what felt like the furious meeting of hammer and anvil inside his chest. He mustered every ounce of cool he possessed, curled a wily grin at his companion. “What?” he asked facetiously. “A woods-witch who holds demons in her thrall? This I have to see.”

Inside was a tempest. Two soldiers had the woman pinioned between them, her wrists and one ankle bound in irons, a thick rope anchoring her foot to a sturdy tent pole. One of the soldiers holding her had a hand in her hair, pulling her head back to face Bendik’s snarl, a bloody cat-scratch across his cheek, both of the figures nearly frothing at the mouth with rage. Lucio caught a blurry glimpse of wild hair, her blue stained mask. Sour shame boiled up in his throat, burning his cheeks. No one had seen him enter, their attention fixed on the scene before them. He sank back in the shadows to assess.

“I know you have the power for it, witch,” Bendik boomed. “I know an old wives’ tale spun to scare children when I hear one, but I also know it would take a great sorceress to survive those woods alone. So there must be some power in your blood.” He squatted down before her, holding her face still with a meaty hand. Her nostrils curled in disgust; Lucio knew well that Bendik stank of unwashed hide. “You  _ will _ summon the demon for us to treat with!”

She threw her leg out in a wild mule’s kick, barely missing Bendik as he jumped backward.

“ _ Fuck _ you!” she yowled. “You cannot conquer War. What kind of sense does that make? Let me  _ go _ ,” she screeched, writhing like a wild stoat. “If I am without the protections of my hut by nightfall, I can’t control any of them, and all manner of demons will descend upon this camp. Is that what you want?”

Bendik struck her across the face in frustration, sent her sprawling. Without hesitation or shock, the woman was back up, her lunge at the enormous man interrupted by the grip of her two captors. The side of her face flushed a livid red.

Lucio recoiled in sympathy at the blow, and the woman whipped her attention toward the silent shape in the shadows. Confusion made her freeze. Her two captors took her distraction as an opportunity to force her down into a defenseless kneel, curling her over and pressing her head toward the furs carpeting the floor of the tent. The beat of calm did not go unnoticed. Bendik followed her gaze. He frowned sharply when his eyes found Lucio.

One of her guards broke the silence with a sudden guffaw. “I think she likes you, Lucio,” he goaded. The other guard laughed in reply.

Bendik sneered in distaste at the smaller man; able to succeed with no effort where he had failed. Then Bendik’s face contorted into a grin full of low, brutish cunning.

“At nightfall, you say -- all manner of demons will find us. Then I advise you work quickly. Call down the demon of War for us. Act as intermediary, and you can be on your way back to your little--” he scoffed to himself “-- _ home _ in the woods. If you don’t cooperate, we’ll just wait for the demons to arrive of their own accord. And what luck; we’ll have a ripe offering to give them in settlement.”

He bent down to her level. She spat in his face.

Bendik wiped his mouth with a roar, grabbing her by the arm and raising his hand as if to strike her again. She stared him down with eyes flashing fire. He hesitated, abruptly mindful that his behavior might reflect poorly on him to the men watching. “Bloody witch,” he growled, releasing her arm with a little shake. He spit at her feet and turned toward the others. “A job well done,” he gloated, attempting to smooth over his outburst. “Her lack of cooperation is a trivial obstacle, soon overcome.” He began striding toward the tent flap.

The two soldiers holding her looked suddenly nervous. “What should we do with her?” one asked, the least dimwitted of the two.

“Leave her here. Let her get her anger out on that blond fucking bastard,” Bendik hissed, jabbing a beefy finger at Lucio. “We had a long hunt. I need to rest, and he’s had his.”

Lucio’s heart sprang up with panic. “I don’t -- Bendik, there’s nothing  _ I _ can do--”

“You did nothing to help us in the woods, so now it’s your turn to pull your weight.” He shot a look of utter disgust across the room. “You’ve made her go all tame as a housecat, pretty boy. See if you can keep that up. If not, then I’ll have one less thorn in my side to deal with at the end of the day. I expect you’ll fight it out, and one of you will likely suffer grievous bodily harm.” He simpered tartly. “Don’t let it be her.” Bendik thrust the curtains of the tent open and thundered away.

Lucio looked down at the woman. Her whole body thrummed with hatred. Tilting her head, she managed to look up at him. Even bound by soldiers twice her size, her gaze through the inky mask made some part of him quail.

He turned his back to her, walking over to the table. He heard her twisting around in her restraints, but no more shouting. He spread his arms to lean on the commander’s wooden table. He took a breath to steady himself. Then another, summoning the ability to feign nonchalance.

“Give us the room,” he said to the soldiers. He took their moment of stunned silence to reach for Bendik’s purloined bottle of liquor, uncorking it with his teeth.

“I-- what?” one guard stammered.

“Lucio, she killed  _ five _ of the men on her own, I would not recommend--”

“I said give us the room. Wait outside, if you feel you must.”

He began pouring the liquor into a cup made of black horn, letting the sound ring through the calculating stillness of the tent. He heard the men shuffle off through the cloth of the tent’s opening, the tinkling of chains as she stood.

He lifted the cup to his mouth, took a deep drink, gritting his teeth at the taste. If Bendik wanted him to do his job, then he was owed a bit of his spirits. Fair’s fair. The oaf would get over it.

“I remember you,” she said softly. In her deep voice, even such simple words sounded dangerous. He felt the skin on the back of his skull prickle. “You’re the boy from the woods. The one I saved. Montag.”

He betrayed his agitation by running his fingers through his hair. Then he spread his palms on the table, stabilizing himself. The coarse grain of wood brushed the tips of his fingers. “I am no longer what you knew,” he objected. Then he swallowed sharply, glad she could not see the flush in his cheeks. “My name is Lucio now.”

“Lucio,” she wondered aloud. The sound of her voice, rounding over the curves of his name, sang in his blood. His reaction must have shown in the tensing muscles of his back, for he heard her voice drop an octave in pitch. “Lucio,” she repeated, like an incantation. He shivered. “And whose name was it before it was yours?”

Like a spear through his gut. She knows, she knows; he thought, she knows more of me than anyone here --

“Someone who had no further use for a name. So I took it as my own. A discarded name for a discarded man.”

“What is it you want with me?” she asked suddenly, her voice barbed. “Why does your -- commander -- want me to call the demon of War?”

Lucio scoffed at that. “He is no one’s commander, though he wishes he was. The great imbecile. Our commander died last night in search of the demon, hoping to make a deal to strengthen our ability, and so our force, and so our wealth. Bendik hopes to fulfil that end for his own profit. Me? I’m a simple man,” he conceded with histrionic certainty, his back still turned to her. “I merely went where I stood the highest chance to gain.”

She snorted. “You chased a rumor and a threat of unearthly forces for the promise of a little money? Your companion may be that great of a fool, but I’m not convinced you are.”

“Oh?” he mused, quirking an involuntary, pleased smile he was glad she could not see. He refilled the cup with more smoky liquor. “And what do you believe I am? Don’t think just because you knew me before I had this name that you know who I have become after it.”

Silence hovered like an executioner’s axe. She took a small step forward, staking ground on his territory. He didn’t respond, but his head turned slightly at the sound. She could see the beginnings of his profile, the carved-straight nose and smudged black warpaint beneath his eyes. 

“I believe you still remember the sound of the winds hunting you,” she began.

He felt a chill climb through his body like a fog. He swallowed.

“All men have their demons. Things that call to them in the darkest hours of their lives. But your demons… I have heard their voices calling you. I have stood with you against them.”

She hazarded another step, felt the rope pull against her ankle. He said nothing, willing her to go on.

“You give yourself a name and call yourself a soldier, but I know that beneath the name is still a boy, exiled, alone, and hunted by his past doings. You would not face them again unless you were sure of victory,” she calculated, arriving at the necessary conclusion. “So you must have a plan.”

“Don’t press your luck, witch,” he hissed, rankled that she had called him a boy, turned sharp and defensive. He stared straight ahead, trying to focus on any detail that lay on Ulrik’s desk, anything aside from her. “Don’t forget that I know you, too. That though my men call you sorceress, and fear you in a way they fear neither blade nor battlefield, beneath your name is a girl, whipped and turned from her home. A girl who once let me live, though you had no reason to.  _ Ombria _ ,” he countered, dangerous.

Her name, in his mouth. It sparked within him like a meteor.

“If that is all I am,” she barked, fury rising, “if I am no more than just a girl, why can you not face me?”

Blood thundered in his ears. Answers to her question swarmed in his head like wind. Then he turned.

His eyes struck hers like steel strikes glowing coals. She had to remind herself of the time that had passed -- not long; not long at all for his face to have tempered so from boyhood, hammered into shape on the anvil of battle.

“So what is it to be,” she continued, aggressively testing ground. “If I am without the protections of my hut, the demons will find me, and they will find this camp. They will find you.”

She watched the corner of his mouth curl up in a smile. “Perhaps I want them to find me.”

Her top lip arched in baffled disdain. “What if I told you that, from here, I cannot control them? That this plan does not lead where you think it leads?”

He laughed. A forced laugh, she thought. He was afraid. Perhaps even afraid of her, despite what he said. That was something she could use to her advantage.

“You sound as if you care what happens to me,” he said simply.

She had no reply, merely ground her teeth and raised her chin in a look of poisonous defiance.

“I was no one,” he breathed, voice dropping to a murmur, unburdening himself to her before he even realized what he was doing. He tried to cover his sudden vulnerability with bluster, taking a pair of steps closer in an ostentatious show of bravery. “I fought my way to becoming a mercenary, whose skill is well-respected. I was held in esteem by our late commander and on the way to becoming a leader in my own right. But a backwater leader, with a disorganized rabble at my command. And every day, my clock ticks and tocks a little louder. Every day I spend on the battlefield, I wait for death to strike its chime.” His head tilted slightly toward her, composure faltering momentarily as he caught the nostalgic scent of birch and apples. A swirl of memory overcame him and he wrestled it down. He swallowed and continued. “Ulrik wanted it. Bendik wants it. And I do as well. I have a taste for something greater. Conquest that I can only achieve with your help.”

He wanted to learn all the ways she had changed since they had met. He wanted to return to how he was, safe within her house. He wanted to smell her fire and feel the birch broom bite his flesh. And he wanted to feel the violence in her seize on the violence in him, the thought making him quake with sudden heat --

“Stop with the bombast,” she snarled.

His lip arched up in an impetuous grin. “Whatever do you mean?”

“I know you came looking for me. I know you came to my hut as morning broke, I know there is more that you are not saying. Perhaps you are the enterprising bastard you say you are, but you say it far too loudly for that to be the whole truth.” Her words struck him like daggers. Unconsciously, he took a step back. She tried to advance, halted by the tug of rope at her ankle. “Or perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps you have learned nothing since I last saw you. A boy with no sense. Rash and inchoate--”

“Guards,” he boomed. Two massive forms buffeted through the tent flap, flanking Ombria’s sides. The look she gave him was incandescent with loathing. Lucio turned back to his cup of liquor on the table and coolly took it up. “Lock her up. The cage should do; bring it here. I want her guarded carefully. I will not have her escaping.” The authority in his voice made them quick to respond; any allegiance they had felt to Bendik the night before evaporated at his commands.

He left the tent like a tempest, swirling the cloth behind him. He took a breath. Then went to find some food. He needed to adjust his strategy.


	9. Part 2: VII

##  VII

Ombria paced back and forth in the metal hutch erected in the old commander’s tent, the manacles around her ankles clinking with each turn. She had not sat on the little wooden stool propped in the corner.  _ Lucio _ , she thought, his new name ringing in her head. He was right. She didn’t know him. He had been a flurry blown in through the door of her hut between long stretches of silence and solitude. Her appeal to their previous meeting had been calculated, the only leverage she saw against him, and she knew the blow had struck. Something was there, beneath his untroubled exterior.

A little splinter of light fell on her face from the opening tent flap. She stopped, watching. In Lucio’s left hand was a plate of food; soldier’s fare, pickled things and hard bread and strips of salted meat. In the other hand was a horn of water.

He approached the door of her prison, nodded to the guard to unlock it. He stepped, unarmed, into the cage, and with a mild nod of his head, he dismissed the guard. She noted the implicit power that he exhibited over the other men. He had mentioned that their commander had died the night before, and that Bendik meant to assume power. She was caught in the middle of anarchy, intended as a bargaining chip. But Lucio, for his part, seemed to remain unconcerned. It was diplomacy he offered, laced though it may be with threat.

“You know,” he began. “It would only be honorable of me to repay the hospitality you showed me in your own home.” Balancing the plate on his arm, he pulled a wooden stool up and lay the food and drink on it. Then he pulled up a seat of his own and settled onto it, placing himself in a position of submission below her level. Her eyes, looking down at him, were afire. It made him smile, despite himself. “Let’s try this again.”

“Unchain me, then.”

He merely laughed, reaching forward to pull apart the thick black bread, placed a dark stripe of meat on top. “I hope you don’t mind if I eat with you,” he said. “I’m famished.”

She folded her arms. Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “By all means. Help yourself.”

The smile he flashed her was superb, playful, dazzling. She hated him.

He pulled out a little knife, speared a pickled beet and put it on top of the meat and bread. It left red juice running down the length of the blade, as though it had been used to wound a foe. He placed the knife down. He was too busy taking a bite of his food to notice her eyes lingering on it.

“I traveled, you know. After I left your woods. I went north, like you said, as far north as Drakr, and built a reputation for ruthlessness using only my sword and my bare hands. I tried different things. Fighting pits, performances for rich men and women longing for a bit of excitement. But I found I had a knack for melee. Besides, work on a battlefield was much more consistent. There will always be another war. Another person who wants something someone else has, and willing to risk other people’s lives for it.”

“Is it your goal to bore me into helping you?” she drawled, irritated.

He coughed a laugh around a mouthful of food; grinned up at her. “I thought you might be curious. About what happened, after we parted.”

“I wasn’t.”

He shrugged, deflecting the barb with feigned nonchalance.

“You wound me.”

“Has time among soldiers turned you this insufferable, or were you always this way?” The light sizzled in her eyes.

He chuckled. “I say so only because I am curious about you. And what happened with you after we parted.”

Despite herself, she hesitated. He searched her eyes for any clue that they might yet be something other than adversaries.

“Please,” he implored, gesturing. “Sit. Eat. I promise it isn’t poisoned. That would quite defeat the purpose. Besides, we’ve little enough to fill our own bellies that we would waste good food on a dead woman.”

She took a slow, heaving breath. Then she took the seat opposite him, with only the short space of the plate on the three-legged stool between them. She was close enough to see the smudged ink beneath his eyes, to pick the multifaceted golds that darted through his hair. She studied him, comparing his face now to the one she remembered. A trifle thinner, she thought, his cheeks cutting deep and his jawline sharp as a marble carving. He had a brown freckle underneath his right eye, a little scar kissed just below the corner of his mouth.

His eyes watched hers flicker attentively over him. He realized that he had only ever seen her by firelight before now. He noticed the way the blue paint on her face was more of a stain on her brown skin, like a tattoo. He could track the little hatches of dye marching down each cheek to her jaw. He had thought, before, that her eyes were black as the broad, curling tangle of her hair. When he saw them both now, catching glints of fox fur and topaz in the daylight, they surprised him.

Suddenly sheepish, he looked down, reaching out to break off a piece of the dense bread. He folded a piece of meat into it and held it out to her, smiling. She reached out, took it from his hand. Their fingers touched, soft and momentary as the brush of grass. She took a great bite, noticeably relaxing as she swallowed and took another. He offered her the water, and she drank.

“I admit, I often wondered what you do all day in those woods. Don’t you get lonely?”

“You already know the answer to that question,” she growled.

“Remind me, then.”

She sighed, chewing. Her eyes, focused on some unknowable distance, seemed sadder to him than he remembered.

“Of course I’m lonely,” she whispered.

He contemplated the look in her eyes. “I remember how opposed you were to the idea of leaving that loneliness. I remember why,” he said gently. Their eyes met, recalling that they knew things of each other that no one else in the world did. “Did you ever consider it again?” he asked. “After I left?”

She seemed cold. Like an old ember, long extinguished.

“Yes,” she answered quietly, providing no additional details.

“And now?”

She stirred, took another bite of food to delay having to answer him. He waited.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

A little flicker went through him.  _ Progress _ , he thought. “Will you help me, then?” he asked. “I’ve seen you control demons before. Will you help me call War and win its favor?”

His question shook her out of her pensive daze. She seemed to harden like ice over deep waters. “It isn’t possible,” she argued. “In my own hut, controlling them for my own means, careful with what I ask -- maybe. For you? An unknown mercenary soldier asking for the power to pass untouched through a battlefield? War will laugh itself bloody in your face.”

“And what would you say if I told you I will not let you go home until you help us?”

She squinted her eyes, smiling sardonically at him. “I’d say you were a fool and a horrible liar.”

Lucio shoved his stool backward and stood in frustration. He rolled his eyes and snorted a disbelieving laugh, turning his back to her.

In that moment, he felt a hand in his hair, pulling back, the knife he had brought pressed against his windpipe. He sucked in a gasp through his teeth, feeling her small body pressed against his back, her voice suddenly by his ear.

“You must have known,” she whispered, her warm breath brushing strands of his hair, tickling his neck. “That rope would not hold me, nor chains, nor cell. You’ve seen what I can do. I can hurt you in ways you have never imagined.”

His voice caught somewhere between a chuckle and a groan. “Don’t try to seduce your way out of this,” he grinned, and she wrenched his head back harder, pressing his body into the metal bars. His mouth fell open involuntarily, letting out an electrified laugh.

“I am not seducing you,” she growled. In her chest, bird’s wings began to flutter.

“Aren’t you?” His voice was swollen with dulcet longing. “Aren’t you a little wild thinggggg _ gggggg _ \--” he said, his voice dragging out nervously as she jerked the blade against skin, drawing a ruby of blood.

“You knew I was a sorceress. That chains likely meant nothing.” She kicked the fallen chains at her feet for emphasis, making sure he heard them. “You knew, and still you entered alone. You shut yourself in a cage with a wild animal. Why, Lucio?” She hoped he could not hear the note of pleading in her voice.

“Why?” he repeated. He felt a shudder run through him from the crown of his head down to his knees. His eyes closed and his skin prickled. Then his laughter rang out again, hoarse against the blade. “You may as well answer me why, if you had the power to leave, you chose instead to stay.”

She said nothing, disarmed and floundering. He gave her a mercy and continued.

“I supposed it was likely that I would come back to an empty cage. I didn’t, so the risk I took proved fruitful. That despite your fear and your solitude, you also take risks. And that perhaps you would be willing to risk helping me.”

She hesitated. In that brief moment she caught his scent, clean sweat and campfire. Something hummed underneath it, a smell like warm cloves that was uniquely his. She lowered the knife, loosening her fingers from his hair. When she spoke again, her voice had a steely edge, cutting its way through the gentle rushing beneath her ribs.

“I have no power over War,” she began, testing ground. He braced himself on the metal bars, turning to face her. “I could summon them. But upon their arrival, I would be as powerless as you -- more so, I think.” She swallowed, watching the shift in his gaze, gauging his reaction.

“More so? How?”

His eyes were bloodless as the Moon. Unreadable. She knew she shouldn’t trust him.

“It’s me the demon wants,” she said, heart careening wildly. “A witch’s blood is precious to War. I have some power, but I don’t know if it is enough to bind them.”

He took a thoughtful breath, searching her face.

“Two exiles,” he said spontaneously.

She shook her head. “What?”

A smile lit his face like a taper. “The two of us. Without home and without cause, but somehow, even though years have passed, we found each other again. It must mean something.”

She tilted her head back, chin out in defiance. “It means that ogre of a mercenary sent men into the woods to find me.”

He laughed. Despite herself, she found she was beginning to warm to the sound, the utter abandon of it.

“Help me,” he entreated one last time. “Aid me in this treaty with a demon. It is a risk,” he baited, the end of his sentence lingering in the air between them.  _ You also take risks _ . His smile was irresistible. “Two exiles might create a kingdom of their own.”

A whisper cut through the tent, blowing open the cloth entrance. Outside, the light splashed marigold and rose on the snow as the sun began to sink. Ombria jumped at a sudden touch. Lucio had taken her hands in his, his fingers lingering on the little cross-shaped scar on the flesh beneath her thumb. Then he turned, unlocked the door to the cage and strode out, leaving it open for her to follow or to escape. He turned back to her, expectant.

“The choice is yours,” he said. 

She looked at him as though he were a madman.  _ Perhaps _ , she thought wildly,  _ he is _ .

Then she stepped over the threshold.

  
  



	10. Part 2: VIII

##  VIII

Bendik was none too happy to see the sorceress unchained, walking calmly side-by-side with his adversary. When the witch caught sight of him she hesitated. The conspiratorial way that Lucio followed her gaze, pacifying her with a whisper in her ear, made Bendik feel ready to kill the both of them then and there and be done with it all. It would be so much easier, he thought, as Lucio made his way to him.

“I want you to recall that this is for the good of our party,” Lucio hissed quietly, out of the witch’s earshot. “You cannot succeed in this endeavor without her aid, at least at first. I know that you and I have our differences. But let us call this a truce,” he appealed.

Bendik was loath to work together with him, but began to think logically. If he were to take command, and, assuming all went well with the demon’s deal, take command over a force far larger than remained at present, he would need to learn to be strategic. No doubt he would have to join forces with those he disliked, Lucio included, in the future.

He sniffed proudly. “A truce,” he concurred. “What’s your plan?”

Lucio glanced over his shoulder to where he could see Pipp, nervous but clearly fascinated, making awkward small-talk with Ombria. His lips puckered in an attempt to hold in a little smile.

“Demons prefer sacrifice,” he explained. He gave Bendik a look that he hoped transmitted as meaningful. When Bendik didn’t react, he jerked his head, rolling his eyes, trying to gesture significantly toward the witch.

At long last, Bendik made a slow nod.

“We shouldn’t need more than--” Lucio thought for a moment, then settled. “Two men. She won’t expect it. Best to leave the bulk of our number behind with the camp, so we don’t risk all of our lives with a potentially ill-tempered demon.”

“There’s still a chance we’ll fail?” Bendik asked, chewing his lip.

Lucio nodded. “There’s always a chance we’ll fail. We’re dealing with a diabolical force and taking a risk. But I assume, commander, that it’s a risk you are willing to take.” His eyes questioned innocently.

Bendik didn’t hesitate in affirming.

“Good,” Lucio said. “Now that we’ve put our quarrels aside. You gather your men. I’ll gather the witch. We’ll make for the open field far from the camp, to protect the rest. Tell the men it was all your idea, if you wish. It is your right to take credit, after all.”

Lucio made his way back to the witch, who was showing Pipp her antler-handled knife, carved with odd little symbols. Bendik watched a moment before going to find two companions. He smiled. He was beginning, at last, to feel optimistic.

~

The five of them marched across the tundra as the sun began to set, making for the treeline. Ombria focused on the faint glow from within the trees; a rusty gleam that seemed, after a second glance, to have been only her imagination. The soldiers strained their eyes, sure of some presence lingering just at the periphery of their vision. In the snow, she drew a large sigil, a circle with complex, forked spokes.

She planted her feet, antler-handled knife drawn in one hand. Her breathing slowed, deepening in pitch until each exhale seemed to rumble deep in her chest. Her head lolled downward, eyes still fixed within the trees. She began to speak. Lucio’s hair prickled in memory at the twin voices braiding in her throat, at the sudden shift in the wind. One gust was icy and bitter, the next, woven in beside it, was warm, almost alluring. The snow and treetops were cast in a green glow from the swirling aurora above. It made the creeping red light that moved within the woods, silhouetting trees against it, unsettle them all the more.

She pricked her thumb, letting a drop of blood fall into the center of the sigil drawn in the snow. Still her mouth moved in incantations, a smell like white-hot iron beginning to burn on her breath. Lucio looked over at Bendik. Meeting his eyes, the man’s powerful frame seemed strangely shrunken with fear, transfixed.

The red light in the woods grew stronger, peeling the shadows from the birch trees, swarming toward them with the ferocity of charging horses. The men all stepped back involuntarily, some shielding their faces, flinching back from the fiery, winged thing that had rushed to their front lines. The figure rose, spread wings like a gust of soot, its gaping mouth wreathed in oily flames, opening a hungry maw over the tiny woman and her blade. War screeched like the unsheathing of a thousand swords.

“Demon of War,” Ombria boomed, her voice like a thunderclap. Lambent yellow eyes fixed on her hungrily, its breath molten and humid with the stench of rot. “There is one here who would treat with you! I act as envoy for one who would seek your favor.” How she maintained eye contact with what looked like a living inferno, Lucio thought, he couldn’t fathom.

Lucio stepped forward, sword already drawn. The fiery light gilded him. War’s cat eyes turned, appraising him, breathing heat and ash and catching sparks on his red jerkin.

“TELL ME,” War howled, its voice like the bray of dying horses. “TELL ME WHAT THIS FOOL WISHES TO CLAIM BY MY FAVOR.”

Bendik made a panicked move forward, his fury at being upstaged momentarily outweighing his terror. Lucio raised his hand lightly, keeping the gesture low, warning his companion not to interfere. “I wish for the power of Conquest,” he spoke. “For uncanny fortune on the battlefield. That our numbers may increase. That our skill in combat become legend, and that we may know victory!” His cry rang like steel, bolstering the men around him. Lucio’s grin flashed, wily in the firelight, bold as he faced down the flaming, shrieking torment before them.

“YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS THAT I WILL ASK FOR IN RETURN,” the demon crackled. “BLOOD! BLOOD NOW AND ON THE BATTLEFIELD; IT IS FUTURES THAT I WISH TO DEVOUR! IF YOU GIVE THIS TO ME, YOU WILL HAVE THE POWER YOU SEEK--”

The corner of Lucio’s lip curled up, eyes blazing like suns. His hand, poised in a halting gesture, dropped abruptly, signaling to Bendik and the men.

Ombria felt a heavy blow against her shoulder, barely missing her head, and she collapsed like a stone, soldiers’ hands clasping her arms. She yowled in fury.

“Hold her fast,” Lucio boomed, and Bendik dragged her over, forcing her to her knees. War grinned like a mouthful of burning spearheads.

“You--” Ombria spat, her eyes crowding with War’s fire as she turned them toward Lucio. He strode over, his blade searing with light. Bendik crouched, pulled her head back, his face full of hateful glee.

Quick as a viper, Lucio grabbed Bendik’s hair to the side and sliced through his throat. Blood spilled hot and thick out of his gurgling gullet, fountaining across Ombria’s face and onto the snowy ground.

Ombria felt the dead man’s hands loosen and she squirmed away, taking a fighter’s stance to face them. Lucio held Bendik’s gaping throat open, hand twisted in the man’s hair, throwing his corpse to the ground before whirling toward the other two. Though a slighter man than all of them, and outnumbered, he had shock and his own feral speed as an advantage. The two guards he disposed of quickly, running one through the guts and twisting to the other, his swords still blood-slick, cutting a furrow from face to groin with one savage slash.

Ombria looked up at him, wiping the spray of blood from her face with the back of her hand. Lucio stood panting, bloodstained, showing an eyetooth in triumph. He turned toward her. War screamed a laugh like metal scraping, settling down to feast on the pools of blood.

War drank hungrily, humming as loud as canonfire. “IT SHALL BE YOURS, THEN! AN ARMY! AND CONQUEST! CONQUEST SHALL BE YOURS; CITIES SHALL FALL TO YOU. LET LOOSE MY DOGS OF WAR; I SHALL FOLLOW AT YOUR FEET AND DRINK THE BLOOD YOU LEAVE. HOW I WILL RELISH LAPPING AT YOUR HEELS…  _ CONQUEROR _ …”

With a gasp of burning air, War was gone, leaving only blood and ash and the eerily silent burning green tapers of aurora streaking through the sky.

“This was your plan all along,” she whispered.

“Yes.” His hands were red and dripping up to the wrists. “I can find more men to wield swords. A sorceress is far more valuable to me.”

“ _ Valuable _ ,” she sneered. “Are you so in the habit of lying to yourself?”

He knelt to clean his sword in the snow, turning back toward the camp, unwilling to respond to her accusations. After a pair of steps he paused, looked over his shoulder. He seemed to be chewing through difficult words, learning the new taste of them.

“I think perhaps we could make something, you and I. Not a deal, not a bargain, but a partnership. The conqueror with the sorceress by his side,” he spoke, his words frosting into the air like silver thread weaving their futures. Ombria remained silent, crouched in the snow. He turned fully toward her at her silence. The red of the blood he had spilled burned his eyes over the blue-white expanse behind her.

“Go if you wish,” he spat. “Go back to your hut in the woods. Go back to where no one in the world cares for you.”

He swallowed, realizing his unexpected admission. He ran a hand through his hair, brushing away a lock fallen over his face, hoping she could not read the meaning lying beneath his words. Knowing better than to expect those eyes to see anything but the truth.

Twin countenances burned into each other, cautious and dangerous as coursing predators. Then he huffed sharply, turning from her, his breath rushing out in a frosty white hiss. He sheathed his sword and stalked off toward the camp. Only once did he look over his shoulder toward the woods. And he saw nothing but grey cold land meeting grey cold sky.

~

He instructed the men that they were all to head north at dawn. He was met with quick affirmations as he made his way to take his due inheritance of the commander’s tent. No one needed to ask where Bendik had vanished to. The authority of the man left standing was something no one dared to question.

“Where is the sorceress?” Pipp huffed from his shoulder, trailing Lucio as he stormed toward his new tent.

“She’s gone,” he said simply.

“Gone? Did Bendik kill her? Did War take her?”

Lucio didn’t answer. The truth would only lead to more questions. “War’s favor is ours. We got what we came here for,” he growled brusquely, reminding himself internally that yes, that had been the goal. What he said should be the truth of it. Bendik was gone after all, along with any opposition to Lucio’s command, and those remaining had the favor of the demon to build for themselves a glorious future. Why, then, did it feel so bitterly like he was lying?

“Let the others know the news, Pipp. I need to get cleaned up. Get a good night’s sleep before we move out tomorrow.”

Unfamiliar with his tone of authority, Pipp made an awkward nod, fidgeting with a makeshift salute. Before she could question if her actions were proper, she rushed off, leaving Lucio at the mouth of the commander’s tent.

He didn’t bother to build up the smoldering coals in the brazier, instead pouring water into the wooden basin to wash. He peeled off his bloody gloves and rinsed his hands, aggressively splashing water on his face, running fingers through his hair. He leaned over the bowl, arms spread wide. For a long moment he watched the moving shapes on the surface of the water. Silver and black, light playing with dark, his mind stretching wide with memories from the day. The beast in the woods with its frog’s eyes, speaking what felt eerily like prophecy. The hot breath of war roaring in his face, and her --

He pulled his gaze away from the water, yanking off his boots. Ulrik’s tapestry beneath his feet felt cooling, little threads of light and dark criss-crossing beneath his toes. Ulrik’s bedclothes lay in the ditch with their late owner; Lucio drew the line at sleeping in a dead man’s bed. Instead, he had his own sleeping pallet and furs moved to the floor for a makeshift bed.

In the dark, the light of a single taper floated in through the entrance of his tent.

Lucio leapt back, pointing his sword toward the movement, face wide with alarm. His stance loosened as he saw her, her hand shielding the little flame. Candlelight melted over her features, lit in her eyes like little flakes of gold.

“You didn’t leave,” he breathed.

She shook her head.

He put his sword down, saw the shapes in the bowl of water stir. He swallowed.

“What I said -- I meant. You have power that would help me. Perhaps I can offer something worthwhile in return. A deal could be struck.”

“A deal,” she mused. He couldn’t tell if the glint in her eye was the beginnings of a smile, or merely the flame. “You are a snake,” she laughed. “Willing to betray when it suits you. You had a plan; one that suited you to betray in my favor. For my alliance. And then you let me go. Curious,” she said, tilting her head forward slightly, letting her hair shadow the blue paint on her face. Involuntarily, he shifted his weight, stepped toward her. There was no mistaking her smile this time. “Then why the charade? Why make Bendik seize me at the final moment?”

Lucio laughed, a soft rush of breath. “I needed his hands to be… occupied. There was no way I could have defeated the man, let alone three of them, had I fought fairly.”

“Cunning,” she replied. Her face matched his in playfulness. “Then you lied. You let me wonder where your allegiances lay as you made your final decision. Or perhaps even you did not know? Not until the final chime had struck, until you saw which way would bring you the greatest fortune.”

“And you? Willing to dare the demon you had no power against, and for what?” He grinned like a wily, wicked thing. “For me?”

“I would have thought, clever man that you are, you would have gathered by now. That I also lied.”

He should have been shocked. He should have been slighted. Instead he felt hot coils of delight.

“War had no quarrel with me. At any moment, I could have killed you and returned home. I was curious to see which way you would turn.”

He gave her a look as rich and heady as wine.

“Then it would appear I’ve met my match,” he conceded.

She hazarded a step forward, then a second, deciphering the dark look in his pale eyes.

“You know now which way I turned,” he said. “And what it cost me.”

“You dared that much for me?”

“Yes,” he breathed.

“And what, I wonder, would you dare to keep me?”

The smile lit his face like flame. His voice rumbled, low and electric as a promising storm. “I would dare anything.”

They stood a breath apart, the candle fluttering between them.

“The conqueror,” she recited, “with the sorceress by his side.” His words, echoed back to him, sounded like the opening to an old ballad.

She set the candle down on the commander’s table.

She lifted her hand toward him, trepidation and hunger raining through her like sparks. He raised his hand to meet hers, grazing her palm with his knuckle. The blood beat hot in his veins.  _ I want to feel the violence in you seize on the violence in me _ \--

His hand hastened up her arm in a swift caress. “I’ve wanted you,” he begged, the words bursting from him in a fevered rush of air. “Don’t make me wait a moment longer.”

He began to tug her into his embrace and she held up a hand, halting him. She smiled with vicious delight. His cheeks flooded hot and red in response.

“You will wait,” she commanded, “and you will show me your surrender.”

Longing rushed through him with the cold fire of stars. Something compelled him, some ravenous desire to yield to her, and he knelt. He guided her hand to the buckled leather collar around his throat. She brought her other hand up to brush back the brazen strands of his hair. It was cool and thick and damp from the basin water. She gripped tighter, easing his head back, exposing his neck to her, testing his submission.

“You will be a conqueror,” she said. “But there will be one place that you will be powerless. Here, in the dark--”

She whispered his name.

“--You belong to me.”

His gaze, filtered through tawny lashes, was dangerous. Eyes of a lion waiting to spring.

Her hand released his hair, trickled down to brush the lines of his face. Without moving his eyes from hers, he turned his head, nipped the little X on the skin at the base of her thumb. Matching smiles blossomed in the dark.

She seized the belt at his throat, unbuckled it, cast it aside. The cloth of his shirt parted, revealing the taut muscles of his throat, plunging down to the valley of his collarbone, the smooth plains of his breast. She moved downward, undoing the baldric holding his bronze pauldron. Then her fingers moved further, unfastening the buckle of his sword-belt.

He was surrounded by her, her scent burning through the fields of him like wildfire. Apples and oak and birch and woodsmoke and something hot and sweet beneath it all--

Their faces drifted, his lips tracking hers. Her mouth, evading his, was curved with mischief. He snapped his teeth at her like an animal, gaze dropping hungrily. His cheeks burned a bloody, desperate red.

A gasp of air caught in her mouth. She pushed him back against the black-and-gold threads of the tapestry draped on the ground. His arms lay tossed above his head, submitting to her completely as she peeled off what remained of his clothing.

“I am your shadow,” she breathed, kissing up the tender flesh on the inside of his thighs. He made a little, anguished noise, biting his lip and twisting his hands to grip the cloth beneath him. She moved her gaze upward, taking all of him in, his skin like wheat, the coppery hair at his groin. Across the tip of him was pierced a metal dart as silver as his eyes.

She prowled over him, her face hanging above his like a Hunter’s moon in a riot of dark skies.

“I am your shadow, Lucio, and I will follow you among the slain, across the world. And here, in the dark--” she whispered, her hair covering him like night, plunging him inescapably into her “--I will swallow you whole.”

He filled his fists with midnight hair, dragged her mouth down to meet his.

On the table, the single candle gasped and shivered out.

~


End file.
